In the wake of all the penalties we saw on Monday night the league chimed in Tuesday with the following quote:
“I will be speaking with both general managers and coaches before the day’s over about the crap that we’re seeing, the garbage that is going on, some of the issues.”
NHL vice president of hockey operations Mike Murphy
Not for nothing NHL vice president of hockey operations Mike Murphy, this quote came two games too late. You had Vancouver’s Burrows bite the finger of Patrice Bergeron in game one. Then in game two you had the Canuck’s Maxim Lapierre taunting Bergeron with his finger near the end of game two.
At that point what’s the big deal if the Bruins start to taunt back? Apparently a big one in the league’s very strong anti-Boston bias.
Murphy told both the Bruins and Canucks that the next player who wags his finger in a scrum will get a 2-minute penalty, plus a 10-minute misconduct.
Does that mean that biting is still OK? After all there still wasn’t any punishment for that. Just saying.
The league did suspend Vancouver’s Aaron Rome for four games. That would be the rest of the Stanley Cup Finals should the series go seven. But as my friends on Facebook pointed out yesterday, Vancouver loses a third line defenseman, the Bruins lost their #1 sniper forward. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.
So who fills the gap?
Yup. The player that was benched in game three in favor of Shawn Thornton will be asked to step back into the mix. Personally, I would put him on that first line where Horton was playing but that’s because I make my lines the way I would playing PS3. It will be interesting to see what Claude does in this situation.
They drop the puck again tonight for game four at eight on Versus. Here’s hoping that Tim Thomas plays out of his mind again and the Bruins head back to Canada tied at two.
Back tomorrow with a recap.
